What it takes to make it to the Boston FBI

Thursday

May 15, 2014 at 12:14 PMMay 15, 2014 at 2:57 PM

With Whitey Bulger safely tucked away in a federal pen, there may have been hope among local law enforcement types that the Boston office of the FBI might recover its reputation, that people would forget the names of agents Paul Rico and John Connolly, whose corruption and incompetence enabled Bulger’s reign of terror. Then again, with a major motion picture in the works, a new generation will soon be introduced to the Boston FBI.

And now there’s a new name to sully the Boston FBI’s reputation: Aaron McFarlane, now revealed as the cop who killed Ibragim Todashev while interrogating him in his living room.

Thanks to the Globe, we now know that McFarlane – whose name was kept secret for almost a year for no good reason – started out with the Oakland Police Department, where he reportedly beat up a lot of people and cost the city a bunch of money in lawsuits.

It was clearly a bad hire by the Oakland PD, and police departments have a special way of getting rid of bad hires. McFarlane was discovered to have a disability and retired on a pension worth more than $50,000 a year – at age 31.

Then he was hired by the FBI, and sent to Boston.

Rick Holmes

With Whitey Bulger safely tucked away in a federal pen, there may have been hope among local law enforcement types that the Boston office of the FBI might recover its reputation, that people would forget the names of agents Paul Rico and John Connolly, whose corruption and incompetence enabled Bulger’s reign of terror. Then again, with a major motion picture in the works, a new generation will soon be introduced to the Boston FBI.

And now there’s a new name to sully the Boston FBI’s reputation: Aaron McFarlane, now revealed as the cop who killed Ibragim Todashev while interrogating him in his living room.

Thanks to the Globe, we now know that McFarlane – whose name was kept secret for almost a year for no good reason – started out with the Oakland Police Department, where he reportedly beat up a lot of people and cost the city a bunch of money in lawsuits.

It was clearly a bad hire by the Oakland PD, and police departments have a special way of getting rid of bad hires. McFarlane was discovered to have a disability and retired on a pension worth more than $50,000 a year – at age 31.